“If the United States was in the Muslim world, the Muslims who are here would be calling and happy to see the Shariah applied, yes we would”

Calling for Sharia in the U.S., and the allegedly moderate American Muslim advocacy groups are silent. CAIR recently prevailed upon a group of Muslim panelists to drop off an American Library Association panel in Chicago rather than appear with me, whereupon the ALA dropped the panel — but about this conference they have been silent. The message? Resisting Sharia is, to CAIR, “bigotry.” Calling for Sharia, however, appears to be just fine with them.

An update on this story. “Hizb Ut-Tahrir: Shariah Takes Precedence over U.S. Constitution: Imam Promises to Fight ‘Until Islam Becomes Victorious or We Die in the Attempt,'” from IPT News, July 20 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Oak Lawn, Illinois – Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), the international movement to re-establish an international Islamic state Â­ or Caliphate – kicked off a new campaign to win American recruits Sunday afternoon in this Chicago suburb. Nearly 300 people packed the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel for its Khalifah Conference on “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam” to listen to HT ideologues blame capitalism for World War I and World War II; the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown; the current violence in Iraq and Afghanistan; world poverty and malnutrition and inner-city drug use….

Hizb ut-Tahrir aims to restore the Caliphate that existed during the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk abolished it in 1924 in an effort to create a secular, Europeanized state.

Security at the conference was very tight. Oak Lawn police maintained a checkpoint outside the Hilton, and local police and HT’s own security people had a substantial presence inside the hotel. In the ballroom where the conference took place, men and women were largely segregated, with men in the front and women in the back. This became a significant point of contention between HT supporters and several members of the audience who objected to this arrangement. At one point, an unidentified Hizb ut-Tahrir speaker became flustered over this line of questioning.

“Men and women,” he blurted out, must be kept separate “to prevent people from behaving like animals.”

A woman in the audience responded: “How does intermingling between men and women make you animals?” HT panelists didn’t have a persuasive answer, and soon adjourned that session….

When a few skeptical audience members pressed speakers over the fact that Islamic governments in Iran and Saudi Arabia are despotic, conference speakers claimed those weren’t “authentic” Muslim governments and that the CIA (and by implication, the capitalist U.S. government) was to blame for the problems in those countries. In an interview with WBBM-TV in Chicago, HT deputy spokesman Mohammad Malkawi refused to specifically condemn Al Qaida and the Taliban.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has not been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government and it insists it is only interested in instituting radical change by nonviolent means. But HT’s alumni include 9/ll mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the late Iraqi terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi and would-be Hamas suicide bombers, and the group’s pro-jihadist rhetoric has led critics to label it a “conveyor belt for terrorists.”

One Muslim American group issued a statement in advance of the conference condemning Hizb ut-Tahrir’s radical ideology and challenging others to follow suit….

A speaker identified by conference organizers as Imam Jaleel Abdul Adil said that “if they offer us the sun, or the moon, or a nice raise, or a passport, or a house in the suburbs or even a place to pray at the job, on the condition that we stop calling for Islam as a complete way of life – we should never do that, ever do that – unless and until Islam becomes victorious or we die in the attempt.” (To see the clip, click here.)

Later, the following dialogue ensued between the imam and a member of the audience over whether Shariah or the Constitution should be the supreme law of the land in the United States (click here to see the clip):

Audience member: “Would you get rid of the Constitution for Shariah, yes or no?”

Imam: “Over the Muslim world? Yes, it would be gone.”

Audience Member: And so if the United States was a Muslim world, the Constitution would be gone?”

Imam: “If the United States was in the Muslim world, the Muslims who are here would be calling and happy to see the Shariah applied, yes we would.”

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